brutalism to industrial

After several inspiring, friendly, and collegial days at the 54th annual ARLIS/NA conference, I took off this morning from the Hôtel Bonaventure in Montreal toward New York State. The Bonaventure is at the top (10th floor plus) of a brutalist masterwork built for Expo 67. I am fond of brutalism but the hotel is very much closed off from the outside world. There are courtyards (with ducks) as well as the swimming pool area. It was hard to know what was North or South when you were on the conference floor. Our hotel room looked out onto the city but other folks had courtyard views.

Since I drove to Montreal, it was possible to switch out the traveling a little bit. I went up to Montreal via Syracuse, crossing into Canada at Alexandria Bay. The flatness of the Ontario and Quebec landscape on the North side of the Saint Lawrence River was a surprise to me. I headed home straight South from Montreal, into the Adirondacks toward Albany in order to head over to Williamstown and North Adams, Massachusetts, for visits to the Clark Art Institute and MASS MoCA respectively.

MASS MoCA's shorter-term exhibitions for this year do not open until later in May but the spread out spaces of the industrial buildings with plenty of windows and a variety of things to view through them were an elixir for a tired brain. I had already seen the Jeffrey Gibson show but it was more compelling to just let it wash over me this time. Immersive, they say. I had seen the "New York State of Mind" show but the 1975 picture with Patti Smith at a political protest where the sign next to her says "Stop U.S. arming the shah's fascist regime" resounded quite differently than it did a year ago. One of the pieces in Zora J Murff's show was "Bully Pulpit" from which her recorded voice includes text inspired by Black radical activist and political prisoner George Jackson who was killed by guards in 1971. "When my people receive justice, I am sure I will receive it too." The text of Jimena Sarno's two-channel video installation "Las Tres Gracias" draws on creation legends and Third World literature. One of the days (ninth?) of creation "marked the nether world for those who have poison in their souls."

The picture is an aerial view of the industrial buildings that have been converted into the MASS MoCA campus in North Adams, Massachusetts, a few miles East of Williamstown.

ARLIS/NA @ CDMX

I just got back from the Art Libraries Society of North America conference in Mexico City, our first conference in Mexico although we have been proudly North American all of our collective lives. We have already met a few times in Canada (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Banff). Mexico City is a gritty city, like I like 'em. Gritty, busy, noisy, diverse, full of architectural treasures, good and interesting art, food (fancy and plain).

On our last afternoon, after the business meeting, Bill and I walked over to see the murals in the Secretariat of Public Education building. Diego Rivera, Jean Charlot, and others. We meandered on the way back, partly on the Calle de la República de Cuba. In addition to bridal shops and gay bars, we saw this building that could use some attention and maintenance. I think a third-floor deck would be just fine through those open arches.

That evening, we went to the Palacio de Bellas Artes for a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico. The program included an overture by Louise Farrenc (Opus 23), a double bass concerto by Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf (KR 172), and the Third ("Organ") Symphony by Camille Saint-Saëns. The music was lovely. The conductor was a joy to watch. The hall has a Tiffany dome as well as a Tiffany (glass) stage curtain. The first and third works were played on the full stage. The Ditters von Dittersdorf only uses a chamber orchestra so they put some chairs on the front of the proscenium and lowered the Tiffany glass curtain for that portion of the concert. We were physically as well as musically in heaven. Bill had purposely chosen seats in the top of the house (más alta, por favor) so we were close to the Tiffany dome.

Now back home and last night was the dance showing by choreography students at Alfred University. Pretty glorious too. Stendhal much?

(view from exhibit hall at the conference, Hilton Reforma)

(my CDMX picture album on Flickr)

here and there

Here and there are concepts (words) that especially resonate during a pandemic with social distancing. You spend a lot of time here but wish you could be there. The headline of the lead article in today's Sunday Styles section of the New York Times is "It's hard when you can't go anywhere." It's a story about six people in an assisted living facility in Colorado who received cameras to document life during the coronavirus crisis. It's hard to see pictures of places that you've visited, imagine how empty they may be now, and how much you wish you could go there again.

Vittoria, Sicily, Italy: Piazza del Popolo

Lily had sent me a message about a virtual toast via Zoom for Milan who received this year's ARLIS/NA Distinguished Service Award. In my response to Lily, I said I intended to be there for the virtual toast but, in reality, I'll be here for the toast, seeing Milan and the others on a screen.

I was listening to Weekend Edition as I drove to Wegmans in Hornell to get my Sunday Times and some groceries. One of the stories was "Author Elizabeth Acevedo on her new novel 'Clap when you land'" (published by HarperCollins). The novel-in-verse revolves around two girls whose father dies in a plane crash. He had maintained two families, one in New York City and one in the Dominican Republic, and neither knew about the other. The girls deal with "the devastation of loss, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the bittersweet bonds that shape our lives" (from publisher's description) as they try to balance the particular here and there of their newly shared reality.

In a short sequence in the "Carl's Funeral" episode of Schitt's Creek, Bob is talking to Twyla at the Café Tropical. Carl was his brother and Twyla asks Bob how he's doing and says "Death is just life except you're not here. You're somewhere else. You know, but that's ok because at least you're somewhere. You know, when does somewhere become there, and when does there become here. And I ..." Bob cuts in to say "Just a coffee, please." Twyla asks "For here?"

olfactory

I really enjoyed Sofija Stefanovic's essay "Smells Like Home" in the New York times a few days ago. She talks about how smells -- good or bad -- can take you to another place. For Stefanovic, who migrated to Australia as a child from the former Yugoslavia, the childhood smells of Belgrade can become like Proust's madeleine though totally unrecognized when she was in Yugoslavia.

I'm not sure my childhood had such evocative smells but today was an olfactory, or potentially very smelly, day. When I pulled on my jeans, I noticed the smell of the laundry in Turin. We were in Italy in March and decided to use a laundry rather than try to figure out the washer in our airbnb apartment. I don't normally use scented detergent so it was strange to whiff the Italy-laundered jeans and totally splendid to think of Turin.

Out for my morning walk. It's earlier than usual because I was heading out early to an ARLIS/NA Upstate New York chapter meeting in Corning. I was walking along in my morning quasi-meditative fog when I'm brought up short by the skunk just a few paces ahead of me. I crossed the street and he slunk off into the brush. Phew.

I got to the chapter meeting and one of my colleagues admitted that she was in the process of moving and had had trouble finding clean clothes to put on and hoped she wasn't smelly. Nope, you're fine.

Our chapter likes to do silent auctions at our chapter meetings. I don't know if it was the skunk, Proust, laundry detergent, or just the crazies but I bid on the little box of scented soaps. All the way home, the car interior was creating a whole new, very fragrant memory.

elegies

February was a busy month with three of my regular conferences occurring between the 8th and 28th. The American Library Association conference was in Denver; the CAA: Advancing Art & Design (formerly known as College Art Association) conference was in Los Angeles; the Art Libraries Society of North America conference was in New York City. Each was good and enjoyable in the normal ways: meetings, seeing friends, visiting cities. This year, I was able to see a number of friends in the various cities beyond the normal crowd. It was really wonderful. And of course there was art to see in each city.

This arrangement was part of the Jorge Otero: Elegies exhibition at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Three of the works are by Otero, the other three are Elegies to the Spanish Republic by Robert Motherwell. I had gone to the Bronx Museum to see the Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect exhibition and was delighted to also find the Otero. The Matta-Clark show included a video taken during the making of the Conical Intersect in Paris and showing the folks walking or driving past as they watch the crazy guys cutting holes in the abandoned building near the construction site of the Centre Pompidou.

exemplary buildings

Ten years ago, I blogged here about the Coignet Building at the corner of Third Avenue and 3rd Street in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn.

The building was in rather shabby condition in 2000 when I took this picture, looking down Third Avenue. (Perhaps it's better that the building is rather off in the distance.) It was built in the early 1870s as the office building for the Coignet Stone Company and to show off their fine decorative concrete work. The Gothamist site has a good article by Miranda Katz which includes the building's history and some lovely pictures by Scott Heins taken after its recent restoration. This is one of the "after" pictures:

We have the Terra Cotta Building in Alfred that was built in 1892 by the Celadon Terra Cotta Company for its office building and to display their wares.

Photo by Cynthia Wenslow

It's always good to be able to see how construction materials will look on a real building. As I meandered the streets of Ridgewood in Queens a couple days ago, I noticed a stretch of houses on Woodbine Street near Forest Avenue. The fronts of the buildings were of a rich variety and could help you decide how to re-side your row house. Do you want horizontal clapboards, diagonal boards, fancy plaster with an Italianate feel, faux stone, or maybe just an Italian renaissance palazzo?

Oh, how I wish I had any one of these row houses, whatever siding. It was a great week in New York City: lots of museums and galleries, a couple pop-up concerts at Miller Theater at Columbia, meals with friends, sitting with John's cats, going to the Lissa Rivera and BJ Lillis gallery talk at ClampArt and running into Walter on the subway later. Walter knows Lissa and would have liked to attend the gallery talk but he had to go to meetings to plan the 2018 ARLIS/NA conference.

exquisite corps(e)

Ten years ago, Sharon, Carol, Eric, and I did an exquisite corpse drawing during an ARLIS/NY meeting. Ten minutes ago, I watched an exquisite dance-film by Mitchell Rose: Exquisite Corps (42 choreographers, 1 dance). I've seen performances by a number of the dancing choreographers and the video is fine. Here's Meredith Monk:

road trip 2015: ARLIS/NA in Fort Worth

We are a couple days into the ARLIS/NA annual conference in Fort Worth. Hieronymus is resting at the Sam Museum of Chairs.

You can kind of see my last apartment in Fort Worth from Sam's back yard. I visited the Amon Carter for a while on Thursday morning after sorting my stuff for the conference. Sam wanted me to catalog a book for the library, for old time's sake. How could I refuse?

The Society Circle reception at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth was delightful. We had access to the galleries and the installation of the works is just breathtaking. It is such a privilege to have gallery access when there are not many people in the museum. And the building is so beautiful. I had been thinking that the 1950s building by Herbert Bayer was my favorite museum building in Fort Worth but I may have to reconsider. It's the art collection and exhibition program that made the old building so special. That spirit is still alive in the new building by Tadao Ando.

I have chaired the Cataloging Problems Discussion Group since the 1970s and some years it is especially satisfying. This was one of those years.

The programming is light this evening so I'll probably go to hear the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. As we walked to lunch, we passed the Circle Theatre where I saw several plays when I lived here in the early 1990s. Lots of body memory as I go around Fort Worth even though downtown and the area between downtown and the Cultural District have changed considerably.

connect the dots

At the ARLIS/Western New York (aka the "upstate" chapter) meeting last week at the Watson Homestead, we had two artist talks. One was by Chris McEvoy who described the methodology he uses to make his paintings. It was intriguing. Here's "Some Kind of Nature" (2011) from his website:

I was doing some maintenance in the Scholes catalog and came across several forms of name for Mary McInnes, one of the art history professors here. One of the books attached to her name is Telling Histories: Installations by Ellen Rothenberg and Carrie Mae Weems, the catalog for an exhibition at the Boston University Art Gallery, 1999. It turns out that Chris McEvoy was a preparator for the exhibition, according the credits in the catalog.

I was sorely tempted going to see the Carrie Mae Weems show at the Cleveland Museum of Art which closed just a few days ago. I didn't make it and it is some consolation that it will be at the Guggenheim early next year. Weems has done a wide variety of work and is one of the new MacArthur fellows this year. If you don't know her work, I recommend a trip to her website and here's one of the "African Jewels" from 2009:

I saw some of Weems's photographs of Timbuktu at the Brooklyn Museum some years ago so it was especially troubling when the rebels were battling there. And that reminds me of Chris Huemer who went to Timbuktu one year for Christmas. Chris was then the librarian at the American Academy in Rome though I met her in 1969 or 1970 when we were both at Cornell libraries.

The other artist who spoke to us at ARLIS/WNY was Paul Bartow. Mostly he is involved with social practice and collaboration, with several projects having a nature and science bend. The last book I finished reading was What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation by Tom Finkelpearl (Duke, 2013). The social practitioners are strong around Alfred and I was surprised by a colleague's dismissal of Bartow as not an artist. Oh, well. I enjoyed Bartow's talk and Finkelpearl's book.

And if you read about my enjoyment of the Kyle Abraham concert at the beginning of the school year, it was good to read that he too was selected as a MacArthur Fellow this year.

Judy Hoffberg and the early days

There was a memorial tribute to Judith Hoffberg yesterday morning at the Membership Meeting at the Annual Conference of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA). Judy was the founder of ARLIS/NA, inspired by ARLIS which had just been organized in the U.K. and Ireland. There had been a workshop on art librarianship in 1969, organized by Florence DaLuiso at SUNY Buffalo. Judy had been there along with the "first" generation of ARLIS/NA folks. There was a follow-up meeting during ALA in 1972. Though that first generation wasn't much older than I am, I don't consider myself part of that group. Though I was at College Art in New York City in 1973 when the first official annual conference of ARLIS/NA was held, I didn't know about it; I was at CAA applying for my first job. I had also applied for a job with Florence DaLuiso. Barbara Reed got that job and I got the one at the Frick Fine Arts Library at the University of Pittsburgh. Karen Muller and I applied for each other's first job and she got the one at Yale. Actually, we're not sure if I applied for her job at Yale or another art library one that was open at about the same time. Barbara (my age) and Karen (a couple years younger) were in my ARLIS/NA generation, the second one, if you will.

Judy was an inspiration to all of us but I can only speak for myself. She not only helped me get started in ARLIS/NA but also was a great person to talk about art with. She and I ran into each other several times over the years while we both were galleryhopping in New York City. She lived in Southern California but traveled a lot in pursuit of art, particularly her beloved mail and correspondence art, rubber stamps, and artist's books.

I had become a member of ARLIS/NA by the fall of 1973 and my first conference was the one in Detroit in 1974. In those days, we didn't get much travel support and I stayed at the YMCA across the plaza from the Conrad Hilton conference hotel. That is another story (of suppressed sexuality and all that).

Over the next couple years, I continued to read the ARLIS/NA newsletter and go to the conferences. Those were the days of the development of AACR2 and a much more closed Library of Congress. Nancy John was the representative from ARLIS/NA to the Cataloging Code Revision Committee (the predecessor of CC:DA).

After a meeting at the 1975 Washington conference, I was talking to Carol Mandel, Chris Huemer, and Nancy John, wondering if we needed a cataloging discussion group devoted to classification. They said "go for it" or whatever we said then. In those days, we actually had three Cataloging Problems Discussion Groups. Fair warning to those that think we have too many cataloging meetings. The groups were devoted to description, subjects, and classification (I think) and soon merged into one. Cataloging issues ARE interrelated. We tried to do a mail round robin but it usually got snagged in someone's mail inbox. We also did a notebook every year that had photocopies of any correspondence that folks had had with LC or other agencies. It served as a sort of predecessor of electronic lists, certainly not as timely but did allow you to share your responses with others.

A couple years later, I was asked to run for Treasurer and I won the election, against Janis Ekdahl who had just published her book on American sculpture. I teased her that she had done well to publish and I'd just gotten a bookkeeping job. Still, I'm very glad that I was treasurer when it was bookkeeping rather than development and major finance.

My term started at the Los Angeles conference in 1977 when I again stayed at the bargain hotel, a few blocks from the then Hilton at Seventh and Figueroa (now the Wilshire Grand). It was rather a fleabag and some other ARLISer that started out there moved to the Hilton. John Murchie was starting his term as Chairman and Nancy John was Vice Chairman. Though I was hardly the leading Young Turk, I was part of this group who served as officers when we began to mature and wanted to get past the Judy-centric society. I don't mean to downplay Judy's critical role in the founding of ARLIS/NA but, equally, I recognize that any group, like any person, has to find itself.

Without Judy to run the office, receive the mail, plan the conference, and all the other things that go into running an organization, it fell to us board members. Nancy took on the conference planning portion and I took on the membership records for the period of fall 1977 and spring 1978. Nancy and I teased each other that we had seen headquarters because she stopped at our house in Pittsburgh on her way from her National Gallery job to her new home in Chicago. My role meant that I was receiving and processing a couple dozen memberships every day, in an era when the mailing list was being maintained by typing the names on sheets of Avery labels and trying to keep them pretty much alphabetical. There were many trips to the bank to deposit membership checks.

The finances were so precarious in those days because our mission and membership were expanding quickly but most of our income came from memberships which mostly came in the months one side or the other of January 1st. That year, we asked members to lend us money, to be repaid as new memberships came in. Membership was expanding quickly then and the loans were easily repaid early in 1978. Mary Williamson of Toronto even said that she had made money because the Canadian exchange rate was beneficial then, and getting better.

Soon after that, we got a contract with Charlie Mundt as executive secretary. He represented some association management firm, the name of which I cannot remember. That relationship didn't last very long and we were back to an individual by 1980 when Pam Parry was selected in New Orleans. She was a strong and wise executive director for many years, very different years from the first few when Judy needed to be a mother, a mother who reluctantly had to let the kids go.

Just one Charlie Mundt story. At a reception at the Toronto conference in 1979, the snacks were skimpy and there was grumbling in the house that we weren't getting our money's worth. Charlie often seemed rather a bad fit for ARLIS/NA but he got a hearty round of laughter when he reminded us that the reception was a fundraiser.

Going into the 1979 conference, there was a decision that the terms for the secretary and treasurer should be staggered. Nancy or whoever told me that Karen Harvey, the secretary, had agreed to draw straws for who "got" to hold office for another year. I said that sounded fine and then found out that Karen had actually said "let Sherman do it." So my term as treasurer lasted three years. That's OK; I wouldn't trade that time for anything.

I was inspired to share this history by the memorial tribute to Judy yesterday morning. I was very fond of Judy and am very grateful for her leadership and for the love of art that she passed on to anyone who came nearby.